You might remember I wrote, quite excitedly, about Totally Wreck
Institute‘s FUTURE PROLOGUES: The Compression of Post-Pop Narratives
into Non-Space and Pre-Time at Creative Research Labs , in the GT Fall
Preview. I am more than happy to report that Ben Aqua, Juan Cisneros,
Kyle Dixon, Mark P. Hensel a.k.a. Mizzzard, Mike Ruiz, David Salinas,
Malcolm Elijah Welbourne and Lanneau White more than exceeded my high
expectations for this show. It’s probably the most incredible use of
CRL’s galleries I’ve seen yet, one of the strongest shows that has
happened this year and definitely the best use of black-lights and
smoke machines (with Donna Huanca and collaborators at Women and Their
Work a close second).
From the press release:
"Future
Prologues explores perceptions of reality and time through Totally
Wreck’s complex web of self-created mythology, spirituality, and
technology. The recent UT alumni have created what they call a cosmic
landscape, which fuses matter and anti-matter, transient culture and
forgotten materials, findings from past lives and future anomalies, to
take the audience on a multimedia odyssey."
As far as I could
tell, the impermanent installations, wall drawings and sculptural
pieces had no titles, so here are some images:
I’ve been trying to write something good about this show for about a
week, but during Monday’s artist talk in the gallery space I realized
why I just can’t seem to write something especially coherent: this show
is totally transparent to me. And by that I don’t mean that I see
through it, or take it for granted or in any way feel negatively about
it, but quite the opposite: their particular cocktail of
science-fiction books and movies, synthesizer sounds, saturated colors,
total media immersion, new-age-influenced spirituality and prospective
ethnography for future realities is pretty much the same as mine. I
grew up and have lived with probably the same reference points as these
guys so I "get it." It was also clear to me, during the gallery talk,
that there are some people who absolutely don’t get it, whether because
of personal blocks, conceptual misinterpretations or an inability to
just fucking chill out. Perhaps it’s the synaesthetic possibilities of
the exhibition as a
whole that maybe makes the show seem a little "bossy" as compared to
say, Jorge Macchi at the Blanton, or anything ever shown at Lora
Reynolds, but given the choice, I’d much rather have my senses messed
with.
As mentioned by the Totally Wreck Institute members, this show is in
the most basic sense, about fantasy: everything (references,
intentions, meanings, processes, etc) is intentionally left vague to
promote an imaginative approach to looking and experiencing art. In
this sense, the art is ritualistic, or more accurately, talismanic: it
serves as objects or spaces for loosely guided contemplation, where
answers for questions you didn’t know you had yet could be found, it
you’re into answers and questions.
2 comments
“Perhaps it’s the synaesthetic possibilities of the exhibition as a whole that maybe makes the show seem a little “bossy” as compared to say, Jorge Macchi at the Blanton, or anything ever shown at Lora Reynolds, but given the choice, I’d much rather have my senses messed with.”
I haven’t seen the show so I can’t say anything about that, but personally I thought Macchi was, as well as everything I have seen at LRG, very sense-messing-with. Coming out of Maachi I felt like I had just had a brain massage. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
He “dissents a little” with my POV:
“The romantically psychedelic, meets contemporary mysticism, meets veiled art history, meets laser tag, meets theater, meets live scorpion references aren’t enough for me, i want them to do more than just exist as such. Play with my senses, but then use that to take me somewhere else, somewhere more specific, so i can get to a place of contemplation and actually ask truly meaningful questions. Sensorially i am there, psychologically i am not.”
http://ezimmerman.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/another-list/
My response to that is that you get what you want out of it, as with almost all art. If you are willing to bypass the “psychological” part and interact with the work (and I’m not accusing anyone of not doing that), then maybe some “truly meaningful questions” will come, but, as supported by the lack of titling of the installations, this show isn’t about tidy answers or logical theses.
A possible “truly meaningful question”: O RLY
A possible “truly meaningful” answer: YA RLY